EMC is now offering its Mozy online backup service to Mac users.

MozyHome for Mac has already been downloaded more than 43,000 times by beta users and is the clearest sign yet that the high-end enterprise storage giant sees consumers as a big growth market.

"This is a real clear signal that this is a real big part of the EMC (NYSE: EMC) business moving forward," said Mozy COO Vance Checketts.

It also may well be the fastest-growing part of EMC's business. With more than 700,000 users and 20,000 business signed up, Mozy has grown 40 percent just since January.

EMC also plans small-business and enterprise versions of the Mozy Mac offering this summer (MozyPro and MozyEnterprise).

Designing a backup service for Apple OS X presented some unique challenges, Checketts said. For one, Mac Mail treats each message as an individual file, compared with one huge file for Microsoft Outlook.

"It requires a very dedicated engineering effort," he said, noting that Mozy has a team dedicated to Mac development efforts.

EMC also sees enterprise growth in the Mac and online backup markets, Checketts said.

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According to Checketts, more and more enterprises are using Macs, and virtualization has made it easy to run Windows on Macs. The Mozy service is generating a lot of interest among enterprises, which are inquiring about the service with EMC salespeople, he said.

MozyHome for Mac offers 2GB of online backup for free, or $4.95 a month for unlimited online backup capacity. All files are encrypted with 448-bit Blowfish encryption, and the encrypted files are transferred via a 128-bit SSL connection.

After the initial backup, Mozy backs up only incremental changes to files and folders. In addition to the most recent backup, Mozy keeps 30 days worth of file versions.

This article was first published on Enterprise Storage Forum.